Day: August 6, 2018

I just spent a good amount of time in yesterday’s podcast talking about how much I enjoy Chris Peak’s work over at Rivals.com and I sure do. But I have to say in his Monday Podcast today he threw a knuckleball out to the fans today in his “logical” defense of these last four recruits Pitt has landed. Particularly these last two Offensive Linemen who committed in the past few days.

When discussing these four recruits Chris basically stated that regardless of their star ratings (given out by Rivals) and regardless of the lack of D1 or Power 5 offers these four player were recruits that were highly targeted by this coaching/recruiting staff.

Allow me to repeat that… these four players were highly targeted by the recruiting staff.

Now, in what I can only feel is rather convoluted logic (and Chris is usually very logical) when he states that because Pitt still has offers out to more highly rated recruits and ones with a lot more and better offers and are apparently “still in the hunt for these players… then the fact is that Narduzzi grabbed these four kids makes then automatically as high or higher targets than those still undecided.

I believe that is what he’s saying. He mentioned the logic of that around the 14:00 minute mark in his podcast and firmly believes what he’s expounding on which is good for him to do. I just wonder if any Pitt fans feel the same way I do after listening to the podcast. I had to literally listen to it twice in a row to make sure I understood what he was trying to get across. Either way it was a bit mind-boggling.

Let’s look at the Offensive Lineman we just had commit first because they are some of the worse recruits I have seen Narduzzi take in four years.

2* Matthew Goncalves has offers from 5 wins and 7 loss Pittsburgh and 3-9 American Athletic Conference Connecticut along with five other non-FBS schools like Stoney Brook, Bryant and Villanova to name a few. I say again; one P5 offer (us) and a horrid UCONN team. Remember that Goncalves was unranked until his Pitt offer then he was awarded two stars by Rivals.

Nick Malone (pictured at left) is another OL who is currently “unranked”, was offered and whose commitment was accepted by Pitt. Let’s take a look at his info: He has a total of three offers; 5-7 Pitt, Robert Morris and Eastern Kentucky.

Folks, we beat out Robert Morris for this recruit. That would be the 2-9 Robert Morris team that is. Eastern Kentucky was 4-7 on the year so they are a short step up from Bobby Mo U.

Really, are these are the players we are to believe were actually targeted over other 4* and 3* recruits by this coaching staff. What message does that send to Pitt fans my friends. Well, I have an idea and it isn’t very nice.

Oh, right – let’s see who were these recruits competing against to come here.

Here is a chart derived from our offer list that shows what offers we had out by position to 4*, 3*, 2* and Unrated recruits and then how many are still undecided as of this writing:

So here we see that if Narduzzi has “targeted” these two OL in Gonsalves and Malone it is because the pool of better recruits is shrinking fast. For instance we offered eight 4* offensive tackles and there is one left on the board (BTW they all went to much more successful programs).

Same with 3* offers but more still available there. Then you get to the 2* and Unranked OTs and lo and behold we had offers out to six of them and…just landed two. Good Job Pat! He offered spots to two unranked Offensive Linemen and they accepted. The first two in the class mind you, and maybe the only two.

Sorry friends, but it is pretty darn clear to me that this staff looked at the dwindling pool of available higher rated recruits we previously offered and panicked as they were committing to other programs so then grabbed these two lower rated recruits with crap offers just to get two OLs into this class.